Posted on 01/19/2002 5:03:13 PM PST by LadyJD
I believe this would have been Marse Robert's last review with the great J.E.B. Stuart, the last cavalier. Here are words of General Stuart to his bride:
"What a mockery would such liberty be with submission - I for one - though I stood alone in the Confederacy, without countenance or aid, would uphold the banner of Southern Independence as long as I had a hand left to grasp the staff - and then die before submitting." – J.E.B. Stuart to his wife, 2 March 1862
"Tell my boy when I am gone how I felt & wrote. Tell him never to do anything which his father would be ashamed of - never forget the principles for which his father struggled." – J.E.B. Stuart to his wife, 19 March 1863
"I wish an assurance on your part in the event of your surviving me - that you will make the land for which I have given my life your home and keep my offspring on Southern soil." – J.E.B. Stuart to his wife, 19 March 1863
James Ewell Brown Stuart, February 6, 1833 - May 12, 1864
“Every clause of Jefferson’s tremendous indictment of King George in 1776 was true of Lincoln in 1861-1865.” ---John Gardiner Tyler in THE CONFEDERATE CATECHISM, Section 10, pg. 5.
You are exactly right .....
While serving in Congress, Lincoln was an outspoken supporter of the Marxist/socialist revolutions in Europe going on at the time. In 1861, Honest Abe sought to free the South from itself. Four years, billions of dollars in property loss and debt, and 600,000 lost lives later, Lincoln got his wish and our modern day federal government in Washington is the fruit of his labor. Don't everybody cheer at once. --MATTHEW CHANCEY
"The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history... the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination -- that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. IT IS DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE ANYTHING MORE UNTRUE. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves." --H.L. Mencken on Lincoln's Clintonian lie
"Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by all the influences of history to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision." --General Pat Cleburne, CSA
Sad to say, this Midwesterner has to agree with you. It's ironic, because as much as Lee loved the Union, he owed his first fealty to his native Virginia. I would have to reject that notion, since my native state fought for the Union side. However, my ideological sympathies these days lie south of the Mason-Dixon, I fear.
No. They don't know the meaning of shame.
And all this time, I thought that FreeRepublic was a forum to discover truths; dispel myths; celebrate the essence of the reprensentative democracy we are supposed to reside in; extoll the virtues of those who fought for and revered the United States Constitution. Forgive me for misunderstanding.
And all this time, I thought that FreeRepublic was a forum to discover truths; dispel myths; celebrate the essence of the reprensentative democracy we are supposed to reside in; extoll the virtues of those who fought for and held in reverence the United States Constitution. Forgive me for misunderstanding.
An old adage holds that when a preacher and a fool are in a field arguing, it's hard to tell which is which.
Let's celebrate Lee's honor, nobility, and sense of duty.
You're not talking about truths. You're talking about opinions. Divisive opinions. Controversial opinions. Opinions that ultimately have no resolution and only pick the scab off a conflict that's 150 years old.
Not that FR isn't a good place for that. But I don't think that's what the thread's author had in mind. This thread was a salute to a long-lost gentility and the spirit of a noble man. It's probably not the time or place to get into a century-old fistfight.
Not that any mere sense of propriety will stop you ...
I didn't know the thread was about Lincoln. But to answer your question, that would make Lee an agent of goodness and virtue as well, since both were essentially fighting for the same transcendent principles, though each saw their application differently. Good men can disagree, and gentlemen can disagree politely, even if the contest comes to blows. One's enemy doesn't have to be a villain, just mistaken.
No rant needed; however, the false mythology must be corrected.
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